Welcome to the Screamsheet! This place can best be described as a reflection of my weird and fragmented personality. Here you’ll find rants both childish and mature, fiction both published and unpublished, music, videos, and anything else that might wander across my brain.

Born on the fringes of the Mwangi Expanse, Aewen spent most of her early life struggling for food and doing her best to try and make ends meet with her family. Game was scarce, and those seasons which were fruitful were often spent in competition with other elven tribes or the various deadly creatures of the jungle.

That all changed shortly after Aewen reached her 100th birthday and learned that she had an uncle who had had a successful career with the Pathfinder Society. Like many Pathfinders, this uncle had met an early end, but not before he accumulated a great deal of wealth through his career. The uncle left this inheritance to the Rhevara family, but on one strange condition: that the eldest daughter enter the priesthood of Sarenrae.

Despite her initial unwillingness, Aewen left for the church, leaving the wealth for the rest of her family. When exposed to the teachings of the sun goddess, she found herself gradually won over by the religion and eventually became a fervent follower of Sarenrae. This faith in turn brought divine magic, and she has enjoyed the life of a cleric since.

Although her faith has provided her with a spiritual sanctuary, Aewen has never really experienced a life of comfort and has a secret greedy streak that she tries to keep hidden. She has recently left the priesthood to pursue a life of adventure and hopes to accumulate a great deal of treasure for herself before returning to the Mwangi Expanse in what she hopes will be the comfortable retirement her uncle never got. Greed can sway Aewen, although her devotion to Sarenrae has held true and kept her on the path of good. How long that can last, and how well she can survive a perilous life of adventure long enough to enjoy the wealth she hopes to gain, remains to be seen. Continue reading →

This elegant gold ring is adorned with a large ruby carved to look like a phoenix. When worn, it functions as a ring of sustenance, showcasing a different power only on the death of the wearer or when placed on a corpse’s finger.

When worn by somebody who died, the ring bursts into flame 1d4 rounds after death or 1d4 rounds after the ring is placed on a corpse’s finger. The flames utterly consume the ring, but also restore the wearer to life as though the individual had been the target of a resurrection spell. The process is not without a degree of pain and peril, however – the phoenix fire that destroys the ring also deals 4d6 damage to the creator. This damage is applied after the resurrection has taken effect (i.e., after the wearer has been restored to full health), but in some cases it may still be enough to reduce the wearer to 0 hit points or below. If this happens, the individual’s body is thoroughly immolated, leaving no remains but a pile of ash.

An individual who benefits from the ring’s resurrection effect receives one permanent negative level, as per normal when subjected to the spell. However, if the individual was wearing the ring at the moment of death, the negative level is removed as though the wearer had received the benefit of a greater restoration spell. Individuals who received the ring after death receive the benefits of the resurrection (and the resulting fire damage) but not the greater restoration effect.

Construction
Requirements Forge Ring, create food and water, greater restoration, resurrection; Cost 20,800 gpSpecial If a phoenix feather or 8 ounces of phoenix blood is used as an ingredient during the creation of this ring, the cost is reduced by 250 gp per hit die of the phoenix the reagent came from (5,000 gp for most phoenixes).

To somebody used to the grim and brooding modern Batman, Golden Age stories involving the Caped Crusader are fairly weird. From Batman’s occasional habit of gunning criminals down to the appearance of aliens and monsters every few issues, it’s safe to say that the Dark Knight took a few years to find his footing. Case in point: Batman #1 from 1940, which introduced the character of Catwoman, known then merely as the Cat.

After a six month layoff, my Night Below game which has since become a bastardized version of the Wrath of the Righteous adventure path got rolling again. The assault on Dragonguard Keep gained some momentum, and our heroes came one step closer to breaking up one of the bases of power of Derrezen the dragon-god.

Superhero movies vary from extremely faithful adaptations to the realm of, “Why bother calling that giant cloud Galactus in the first place?” Similarly, casting our favorite superheroes has been a grab-bag of terrible choices, ideas that seemed bad originally but turned into pleasant surprises, and actors that so perfectly fit into their roles that it’s hard to imagine anybody else taking their place.

The list below deals with the latter, focusing on ten perfect casting choices in superhero movies. These are all obviously in my opinion, and they focus around actors that so thoroughly nailed their role that they wound up defining how the general public sees those characters. Those criteria do leave some great performances off the list, such as Adam West’s Batman or Heath Ledger’s Joker, since those characters have so many different interpretations that it’s hard to embrace just one.

Without further ado, here’s what I believe to be the ten best casting jobs in superhero movies so far: Continue reading →

My house has too much stuff in it. I’ve been going through my possessions and deciding what needs to go. Finally, I came across my Big Box o’ Rejections:

Hello, old friend.

When I first started writing, I decided to save all my rejection letters as a way to keep myself motivated. But now that rejections come electronically and are almost exclusively form letters – and now that I have a lengthy publications list – I don’t feel that I need it anymore. So this box has got to go.

The box itself contains rejections, old drafts of stories from writing workshops, and a few magazines and newspapers where I got my first publishing credits. As I sorted through old letters, I got the most enjoyment out of reading some old rejection letters from my high school days, when I wrote articles for Dragon Magazine.